Secret of the Scroll (Greg McKenzie Mysteries) (31 page)

The woman walked toward the others. “Where is Yigal?”

“Here on the ground next to the car,” Zalman said. “You’d better check him out, Yelena. See if he’s all right.”

I looked up to see Moshe Levin standing beside us. “You think your wife is in terrible shape, McKenzie? It is nothing to how she will be if you don’t produce that scroll.”

We were in the worst imaginable position, but I saw one chance. What was required was a small lie . . . one the colonel would go along with. First we had to get into a more civilized situation. That way we would have a better chance at creating a diversion.

“The scroll is at Colonel Jarvis’s apartment in Tel Aviv,” I said, in what I hoped sounded like I was resigned to the inevitable. “We were going to bring it to
Caesarea
. Take us there and you can have the damn thing.”

He gave me a long, icy stare and then looked back toward the Mercedes. “How is Yigal?”

“His breathing seems better, but he hasn’t come around yet,” replied the woman called Yelena. “Could be a concussion. We should get him to the infirmary.”

“Very well,” Levin said. “Put him in the car. Eli and Colonel Jarvis will accompany you to the infirmary. Then you and Eli will take the colonel to his apartment and bring back the scroll . . . if McKenzie is not lying.”

“What about you?” Zalman asked.

“I will stay here and entertain the McKenzies. Call me on the cell phone from Tel Aviv.”

Colonel Jarvis looked at me and mouthed something I couldn’t understand. They loaded the unconscious man in the back seat. I saw Jarvis slip something from his pocket and drop it to the ground. No one else seemed to notice.

After a few minutes, Yelena climbed in beside her wounded comrade, Jarvis was directed to the passenger seat in front and the Mercedes roared off with Eli Zalman at the wheel, his nose bandage odd in the light. By this time I was getting quite concerned about Jake. I asked Levin if I could help Jill inside the house where it was a little warmer, then go check on Jake.

“She can sit in the doorway,” he said.

After I had helped her over to the stoop, Levin looked down, waving the colonel’s Beretta at her menacingly. “If you move from there before we get back, I will shoot your husband in the foot.”

The cold air and the adrenalin from all the violent activity had begun to revive her. I could see defiance creeping into her eyes. But she merely said, “I’m not going anywhere.”

I hurried around to the side of the house with Levin close on my heels. I found Jake just beginning to sit up. He held one hand to his head.

“I feel like I’ve been hit by a baseball bat,” he muttered.

“You’ll be okay,” I said.

Levin moved so Jake could see the Beretta. “You will come with us, Mr. Cohen. Get up.”

I started to help him, but Levin swung the gun toward me. “Stay away from him. He can manage on his own.”

Jake was a bit wobbly, but he made it okay as we walked around front. When we reached the doorway where Jill sat, I felt the urge to loosen things a bit. I gave our host a smirk.

“What’s so funny?” Levin asked.

“Nothing.”

He was not amused. “If they don’t find that scroll at Colonel Jarvis’s apartment, McKenzie, you’ll be interrogated. I’m sure you are familiar with some of our techniques. I will use whatever it takes to extract what we need from you.”

“It would do you no good,” I said. “I don’t know what’s in the scroll. The man who decoded it left a message on my answering machine, but I wasn’t able to get back to him before I had to leave for
Israel
.”

“We’ll see if you’re lying,” he said.

I glanced down at Jill. She had a puzzled look on her face. “Am I the only one here who doesn’t know what’s going on?”

“Sorry, babe. It gets pretty complicated. Remember that so-called Dead Sea Scroll souvenir we bought in
Jaffa
?”

“I wondered about that when they kidnapped me. They never told me what it was all about, though. Then, after they took me to that shopping mall where I saw you, they raced down the interstate until they cut off somewhere and were stopped by two men in a
Toyota
–I think it was a 4Runner. One of them was the man who left here just now.”

“Eli Zalman,” I said.

“Something’s happened to his nose. It looks broken. Anyway, he told me they would return me to my husband. I thought I was being rescued, but when I got into the truck, I felt a needle jab into my arm. That’s about the last thing I remember until I woke up here.”

“For your information, Mrs. McKenzie,” Levin said, “the scroll tells the location of ten gold menorahs from Solomon’s
Temple
, buried somewhere in
Jerusalem
. They would be worth several millions of dollars just for the gold content. But the people I represent wish to return them to their proper place–in the
Third
Temple
, which we will reconstruct on the
Temple
Mount
.”

Jill looked around at me, struggling against hunger and fatigue to understand. “Isn’t that occupied by a couple of Muslim holy places?”

Levin’s voice grew in intensity. I was reminded of some radio evangelists I’d heard back home.

“When we are ready to move, it will be a massive rally of the Jewish people. No one will dare stand in our way. No one can stop us. Not a spineless, compromising government, nor a militant, immoral religious movement that claims to believe in God.”

That little speech brought a shudder as I considered the consequences and realized the scroll and its secret lay only a few feet away in the back of Warren Jarvis’ Jeep. I needed to do something drastic, and do it in a hurry.

Jake Cohen, noble soul that he is, couldn’t keep silent at Levin’s outburst. “You’re totally misreading history as well as theology, Mr. Levin,” he said. “If you think Hitler and his boys were involved in a holocaust, you haven’t seen anything compared to how the Muslim world would react to that. The Crusaders got away with tearing down holy sites for a while, but they were eventually trampled under foot. Things have evolved in frightening ways since those days. Now we have jet planes and laser-guided bombs, nuclear weapons and nerve gas. God put us on this earth to live with each other, not fight each other to the death. The Muslims have as much right to their beliefs as any Jew in
Israel
.”

“What do you know about Jews? You’re a turncoat, Cohen.” He was practically shouting now.

As I watched the fire in his eyes and his grotesque face, I realized what I had to do. I recalled Jarvis’ comment about Levin’s turning demonic when he was highly agitated. I saw how Levin had narrowed his ire onto Jake and I reasoned that kind of concentration would leave a person vulnerable. I stood a few feet away and to his right. I needed to get close enough to swing a foot or karate chop his gun arm. A good chop would break bone.

The two men were having a full-fledged shouting match now, Jake lost in some righteousness of his own. He was quoting scripture and Levin was making dire predictions. I edged to the left and prayed that Jake would keep the argument going long enough.

In his frenzy, Levin had switched from pointing the Beretta at Jake to shaking it up and down angrily in front of his chest. As he raised his arm again, I lunged at him and chopped down near his wrist with all the power I possessed. It sounded like bone cracking, but I wasn’t sure if it was his or mine. Regardless, the gun fell from his grasp and he gripped his arm.

I dove for the gun, but he was too quick. I watched helplessly as he kicked it with his foot and sent it flying into a clump of bushes.

Chapter
42

Levin let out a maniacal shout that may have been Hebrew, though it sounded like pure animal rage. I knew my sixty-five years would be no match for him. My only hope was to put some physical distance between us.

“Let’s see you try and break my nose, McKenzie. I’m no Eli Zalman.”

While he was talking, I drove a kick energized by adrenaline into his groin and he went down.

I took off running toward the tractor shed. There I hoped to find something that would serve as a weapon–an equalizer. Traipsing around the
Holy Land
had provided some exercise the last couple of weeks, but as I sprinted up the gravel road, I knew it wouldn’t take much of this to leave me winded.

Glancing back as I reached the shed, I saw Levin on his feet, starting my way. I looked frantically around the clutter of machinery. I felt a bit of warmth coming from the first tractor I passed, meaning the engine had been run within the past hour or so. The hood was off and leaning against a tire. Most likely a mechanic had been working on it. Against the wall behind it were tools–shovels, hoes, a posthole digger, a sledgehammer, implements too unwieldy to use as a weapon. Then I spotted a cooper’s adz hanging on the wall, a little gizmo my dad had shown me when I was a kid. It’s a tool with a curved blade, sharpened on each end, mounted at right angles to the handle. Coopers were barrel-makers, and they used the tool to shape the wood for the staves. I grabbed it and turned back toward the road.

Levin was about thirty feet away now and closing fast. My best chance would be to disappear into the darkness and shelter of the arbors. I got across the road and plunged into the dismal wet grapevines. The hazards became obvious. I tripped on a vine and fell into mud. As I scrambled to my feet, clutching the adz, I heard Levin shouting from the road.

“You have no place to go, McKenzie. The compound is fenced in and I have people watching the front gate. I also have your wife. For her sake, you had better come out of there.”

I would give up my cover on my own terms. The rows of grapevines ran parallel to the road, and I began to struggle my way toward where the superintendent’s house stood. I stayed a couple of rows back, far enough that I was sure he couldn’t see me.

I had moved only a short distance when I heard a tractor engine start. I wondered if it was the one I had seen, an old Massey-Ferguson with solid rubber front tires and a long engine compartment that had been left with the hood removed. Moments later, I saw headlights glowing above the arbors as the tractor rumbled in the direction I was taking. When it stopped somewhere in the vicinity of the house, I broke into a trot, hoping to find an opening where I could see what he was up to. The result was what I should have expected. I tripped again and went down.

About the time I thought I was near the house, a loud crash of breaking glass shattered the quiet of the night. I wondered if Jake had helped Jill into the house and locked the door. Was Levin breaking a window to get at them?

I edged my way closer to the road in an attempt to determine what was happening. As I did, I found I had moved farther down than I had thought. I was past the house, near the construction area marked by the flare pots. Keeping low, I eased to the side of the road and started walking slowly toward the parking area in front of the house. That was when I saw him, darting away from Colonel Jarvis’ Jeep, swinging something in his hand.

The tractor sat in the road facing me. Levin got painfully into the high seat and started the engine, switching on the lights. As the beams picked me out at the edge of the road, he stood and held something bulky out in front of him.

“I found it, McKenzie!” he yelled, and then laughed like a madman. “You had it with you all the time.”

He sat down, threw the tractor in gear and poured the gas to it, heading straight for me. I backed off, ducking beneath a tangle of grapevines.

When he kept bearing down on me, I turned and struggled back toward the next row of vines. He didn’t falter. The tractor ripped through the arbors, uprooting grapevines and tearing down the posts they were anchored to. The night was filled with a scraping, howling racket. The headlights seemed to spear me, and when I changed directions, they followed like a locked-on radar.

He was getting too close. I finally turned and heaved the cooper’s adz at him. My aim wasn’t high enough. It struck something on top of the engine and stuck there. I could see the adz handle poking up. Then I was running again.

“You’re a dead man, McKenzie!” I heard him scream above the roar of the engine. “They won’t even find your bones.”

I jumped through another row of arbors and found I was back on the gravel road. I was only a few feet from the spot where dirt had been piled beside a wide but shallow hole. The flames in the flare pots swayed like dancers weaving back and forth in the night. I turned to see Levin’s tractor bearing down on me. In seconds it would have me.

I had nowhere to go. The hole gaped to one side; the open road would provide a clear shot at me on the other.

“You son of a bitch!” I yelled as Levin bore down. I grabbed one of the flare pots and lofted it toward the tractor. The thing was a lot heavier than I had imagined, and it pulled me off balance. I tripped over the dirt pile and toppled into the hole. It seemed somehow a fitting end–I was burying myself in my own grave.